Donald Trump has said he will announce new 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the US on Monday that would affect “everybody’, including its largest trading partners Canada and Mexico, in another major escalation of his trade policy overhaul.

The US president, speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, also said he would announce reciprocal tariffs – raising US tariff rates to match those of trading partners – on Tuesday or Wednesday, which would take effect “almost immediately”. “And very simply, it’s, if they charge us, we charge them,” Trump said of the reciprocal tariff plan.

The move on steel and aluminum brought a swift reaction from Doug Ford, the premier of the Canadian province of Ontario, who accused the US president of “shifting goalposts and constant chaos” that would put the economy at risk.

Monday’s tariffs would come on top of existing metals duties, which could affect major suppliers to the US in South Korea and Vietnam.

During his first term, Trump imposed tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum, but later granted several trading partners duty-free quotas, including Canada, Mexico and Brazil.

Joe Biden extended these quotas to Britain, Japan and the European Union, and US steel mill capacity utilization has dropped in recent years. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that the new tariffs would come on top of the existing duties on steel and aluminum.

Trump on Friday announced that he would impose reciprocal tariffs on many countries this week. He did not identify the countries, but the duties would be imposed “so that we’re treated evenly with other countries”.

Also during his flight to New Orleans to watch the Super Bowl, Trump said the US may carry less debt than thought and said it could be because of fraud related to debt payments.

The United States currently has $36.2tn public debt outstanding, according to the US treasury, which plays a central role in the global financial system.

Trump has tasked billionaire Elon Musk’s government efficiency team with rooting out fraud and wasteful spending across the federal government.

“We’re even looking at treasuries,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday. “There could be a problem – you’ve been reading about that, with treasuries and that could be an interesting problem.”

Audits being carried out by Musk’s efficiency team have disrupted operations at several federal agencies.

Trump’s comments on Sunday about potential fraud related to US treasuries raises the question of what sort of action Musk’s team may take on treasuries.

According to government and American Iron and Steel Institute data, the largest sources of US steel imports are Canada, Brazil and Mexico, followed by South Korea and Vietnam.

By a large margin, Canada is the largest supplier of primary aluminum metal to the United States, accounting for 79% of total imports in the first 11 months of 2024. Mexico is a major supplier of aluminum scrap and aluminum alloy.

Trump has long complained about the EU’s 10% tariffs on auto imports being much higher than the US car rate of 2.5%. He frequently states that Europe “won’t take our cars” but ships millions west across the Atlantic every year.

The US, however, enjoys a 25% tariff on pickup trucks, a vital source of profits for Detroit automakers General Motors GM.N, Ford FN and Stellantis’s US operations.

The US trade-weighted average tariff rate is about 2.2%, according to World Trade Organization data, compared with 12% for India, 6.7% for Brazil, 5.1% for Vietnam and 2.7% for European Union countries.

With Reuters

Donald Trump said that he expects Elon Musk to find “billions” of dollars of abuse and fraud in the Pentagon during an interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier that aired before the Super Bowl on Sunday.

“I’m going to tell him very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education. … Then I’m going to go, go to the military. Let’s check the military,” the US president told the host from the rightwing Fox News, adding: “We’re going to find billions, hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud and abuse.”

In the last few weeks, Musk’s “department of government efficiency” has been trying to dismantle numerous federal agencies in Washington DC, going through data systems, shutting down DEI programs, and in some cases, attempting to eliminate entire agencies.

Last week, Musk and Trump attempted to put thousands of workers of the US Agency for International Development (USAid) on leave, but a judge on Friday temporarily blocked the effort.

Without providing any evidence, Trump said in the Baier interview: “You take a look at the USAid, the kind of fraud in there … We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of money that’s going to places where it shouldn’t be going … It’s crazy. It’s a big scam.”

Trump went on to reiterate his wish for Canada to be the 51st state.

“I think Canada would be much better off being a 51st state because we lose $200bn a year with Canada and I’m not going to let that happen,” he added. “It’s too much. Why are we paying $200bn a year, essentially in subsidy to Canada? Now, if they’re a 51st state, I don’t mind doing it.”

Trump is the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl, which has served as the finale of the NFL season since 1966, although it is not unusual for a president to be part of Super Bowl programming.

Presidents have traditionally given interviews to the network hosting the Super Bowl, although both Trump and Joe Biden declined some requests during their first terms.

Biden skipped the Super Bowl interview in 2024, in a move that some Democratic insiders saw as a missed opportunity to speak directly to Americans. Biden’s aides said he eschewed the interview because he felt voters wanted a break from political news.

This year’s interview is somewhat unusual. Fox is hosting the Super Bowl, and has assigned Baier to host the interview. Baier is seen as less rabidly pro-Trump than some of his colleagues, but the move suggested from the beginning that the interview might not be as adversarial as one conducted by a less-partisan network.

Trump, a lifelong New Yorker who moved to his members-only club in Florida after alienating much of his home state, has not indicated which team he will support.

Donald Trump said that he expects Elon Musk to find “billions” of dollars of abuse and fraud in the Pentagon during an interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier that aired before the Super Bowl on Sunday.

“I’m going to tell him very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education. … Then I’m going to go, go to the military. Let’s check the military,” the US president told the host from the rightwing Fox News, adding: “We’re going to find billions, hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud and abuse.”

In the last few weeks, Musk’s “department of government efficiency” has been trying to dismantle numerous federal agencies in Washington DC, going through data systems, shutting down DEI programs, and in some cases, attempting to eliminate entire agencies.

Last week, Musk and Trump attempted to put thousands of workers of the US Agency for International Development (USAid) on leave, but a judge on Friday temporarily blocked the effort.

Without providing any evidence, Trump said in the Baier interview: “You take a look at the USAid, the kind of fraud in there … We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of money that’s going to places where it shouldn’t be going … It’s crazy. It’s a big scam.”

Trump went on to reiterate his wish for Canada to be the 51st state.

“I think Canada would be much better off being a 51st state because we lose $200bn a year with Canada and I’m not going to let that happen,” he added. “It’s too much. Why are we paying $200bn a year, essentially in subsidy to Canada? Now, if they’re a 51st state, I don’t mind doing it.”

Trump is the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl, which has served as the finale of the NFL season since 1966, although it is not unusual for a president to be part of Super Bowl programming.

Presidents have traditionally given interviews to the network hosting the Super Bowl, although both Trump and Joe Biden declined some requests during their first terms.

Biden skipped the Super Bowl interview in 2024, in a move that some Democratic insiders saw as a missed opportunity to speak directly to Americans. Biden’s aides said he eschewed the interview because he felt voters wanted a break from political news.

This year’s interview is somewhat unusual. Fox is hosting the Super Bowl, and has assigned Baier to host the interview. Baier is seen as less rabidly pro-Trump than some of his colleagues, but the move suggested from the beginning that the interview might not be as adversarial as one conducted by a less-partisan network.

Trump, a lifelong New Yorker who moved to his members-only club in Florida after alienating much of his home state, has not indicated which team he will support.

• Donald Trump’s plan for a quick settlement in Ukraine must not only stop the war but also ensure that there can no longer be any more Russian aggression, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said in an interview broadcast on Sunday. Zelenskyy said Ukraine wanted no repeat of the experience of peace accords and talks that failed to produce results in the years running up to Moscow’s February 2022 full-scale invasion. And that, he said, meant putting security guarantees in place. “A frozen conflict will lead to more aggression again and again. Who then will win prizes and go down in history as the victor? No one. It will be an absolute defeat for everyone, both for us, as is important, and for Trump,” Zelenskyy told Britain’s ITV. “If I had an understanding that America and Europe will not abandon us and they will support us and provide security guarantees, I would be ready for any format for talks,” he said.

• The comments were broadcast as Trump indicated that he had been in contact with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and that progress was being made in its talks to end the war; that would mark the first officially acknowledged conversation between Putin and a US president since early 2022. Asked by reporters onboard Air Force One on Sunday whether he had had his conversation with Putin since becoming president on 20 January or before, Trump said: “I’ve had it. Let’s just say I’ve had it … And I expect to have many more conversations. We have to get that war ended.” He added: “If we are talking, I don’t want to tell you about the conversations,” Trump said. “I do believe we’re making progress. We want to stop the Ukraine-Russia war.” Trump told the New York Post on Friday that he had spoken to Putin, remarking that “I better not say” just how many times. In comments to the outlet Trump said he believed Putin “does care” about the killing on the battlefield but did not say if the Russian leader had presented any concrete commitments to end the nearly three-year conflict.

• Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz said on Sunday that senior US diplomats would be in Europe this week “talking through the details of how to end this war and that will mean getting both sides to the table”. In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, Waltz said the Russian economy was not doing well and that Trump “is prepared to tax, to tariff, to sanction” Moscow to get Putin to the negotiating table. Waltz also underscored that the Trump administration is looking to use this week’s engagements to begin talks on clawing back some of the United States’ assistance to Ukraine. He said European allies would need to take a greater role in supporting Ukraine going forward.

• Waltz refused to confirm Trump’s comments about speaking to Putin. “There certainly are a lot of sensitive conversations going on,” he told NBC. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the Tass state news agency that he could not neither confirm nor deny a conversation had taken place between Trump and Putin. “I personally may not know something, be unaware of something,” Peskov said.

• Russia launched an overnight drone attack on Kyiv, sparking a fire at a non-residential building in one of the city’s districts, the mayor of the Ukrainian capital said early on Monday. “All emergency services are on site,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a post on the Telegram messaging app. “So far, there are no injuries reported.”

• Three Baltic states connected to the European power grid on Sunday after severing Soviet-era links with Russia’s network, a shift EU chief Ursula von der Leyen hailed as “freedom from threats and blackmail”. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – former Soviet states that are now EU and Nato members – had been planning the switch for years, but Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine accelerated the process.

• Russia said on Sunday that its forces had captured the eastern Ukrainian village of Orikhovo-Vasylivka, near the strategic military hub of Chasiv Yar that Moscow is attempting to seize. The defence ministry said in a daily briefing that “as a result of decisive attack actions, the South group of troops liberated the settlement of Orekhovo-Vasilevka in the Donetsk region,” using the Russian name for the village about 10 km (six miles) north of Chasiv Yar and near the road to the Ukraine-held city of Sloviansk.

• An explosion on Sunday on an oil tanker at a port in north-west Russia forced the crew to evacuate and was being investigated, the country’s federal shipping agency said. The Rosmorrechflot maritime and river transport agency wrote on Telegram that “an explosion took place in the engine room” of the Koala in Ust-Luga port west of St Petersburg on Sunday morning. The US in January designated more than 180 Russian ships it assesses to be part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” exporting crude oil despite western sanctions. The Koala is not on this list. Ukraine’s security services in January claimed to have used drones to strike a fuel terminal at Ust-Luga, saying that “through it, Russia sells oil and gas with the help of the ’shadow fleet’”.

Donald Trump has said he held talks with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, over a negotiated end of the three year Russia-Ukraine war, and indicated that Russian negotiators want to meet with US counterparts.

Trump told the New York Post that he had spoken to Putin, remarking that “I better not say” just how many times.

In comments to the outlet on Friday aboard Air Force One, Trump said he believed Putin “does care” about the killing on the battlefield but did not say if the Russian leader had presented any concrete commitments to end the nearly three-year conflict.

Trump revealed that he has a plan to end the war but declined to go into details. “I hope it’s fast. Every day people are dying. This war is so bad in Ukraine. I want to end this damn thing.”

Last month, Trump estimated that approximately 1 million Russian soldiers and 700,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed since the invasion began – an estimate far in excess of numbers that Ukrainian officials or independent analysts have presented.

The Post said the national security adviser, Michael Waltz, joined the president during the interview.

“Let’s get these meetings going,” Trump said. “They want to meet. Every day people are dying. Young handsome soldiers are being killed. Young men, like my sons. On both sides. All over the battlefield.”

Waltz would not confirm that Trump had spoken with Putin, telling NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that “there are certainly a lot of sensitive conversations going on” and that senior US diplomats would be in Europe this week “talking through the details of how to end this war and that will mean getting both sides to the table”.

Ending the war, Waltz added, had come up in conversations with India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi; China’s president, Xi Jinping; and leaders across the Middle East. “Everybody is ready to help President Trump end in this war,” Waltz said, and repeated the president’s comments that he is prepared to tax, tariff and sanction Russia.

“The president is prepared to put all of those issues on the table this week, including the future of US aid to Ukraine. We need to recoup those costs, and that is going to be a partnership with the Ukrainians in terms of their rare earth [materials], their natural resources, their oil and gas, and also buying ours.”

But Waltz reiterated what he said was the Trump administration’s “underlying principle” that the Europeans “have to own this conflict going forward. President Trump is going to end it, and then in terms of security guarantees that is squarely going to be with the Europeans.”

During his presidential campaign, Trump made repeated vows to end the war quickly if he was re-elected, often pointing to the loss of life on the battlefield.

Last month, Trump said: “Most people thought this war would last about a week, and now it’s been going on for three years,” and said the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, had expressed interest in a negotiated peace deal.

During the interview on Friday, Trump again expressed sorrow for the loss of life in the war and compared the young men dying to his own sons.

“All those dead people. Young, young, beautiful people. They’re like your kids, two million of them – and for no reason,” Trump told the Post, adding that Putin also “wants to see people stop dying”.

The Kremlin on Sunday declined to confirm or deny the report of the phone call. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the Tass state news agency he was unaware of any such call.

“What can be said about this news: as the administration in Washington unfolds its work, many different communications arise. These communications are conducted through different channels. And of course, amid the multiplicity of these communications, I personally may not know something, be unaware of something. Therefore, in this case, I can neither confirm nor deny it.”

The Kremlin has previously said it is awaiting “signals” on a possible meeting between Trump and Putin. The head of the state Duma committee on international affairs, Leonid Slutsky, has said that work on preparing contacts between Moscow and Washington “is at an advanced stage”.

The US president also ventured into the current standoff between Israel and Iran, saying he “would like a deal done with Iran on non-nuclear” and would prefer a negotiated deal to “bombing the hell out of it … They don’t want to die. Nobody wants to die.”

If there were a deal with Iran, he said, “Israel wouldn’t bomb them”. But he declined to go further on any approach to Iran: “In a way, I don’t like telling you what I’m going to tell them. You know, it’s not nice.”

“I could tell what I have to tell them, and I hope they decide that they’re not going to do what they’re currently thinking of doing. And I think they’ll really be happy,” Trump added.

The Philadelphia Eagles are Super Bowl champions after ending the Kansas City Chiefs’ bid for a historic third successive championship in emphatic, ruthless fashion.

“This is the ultimate team game. You can’t be great without the greatness of others. Great performance by everybody – offense, defense, special teams,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said. “We didn’t really ever care what anyone thought about how we won, or their opinions. All we want to do is win.”

The teams met in the Super Bowl for the second time in three seasons, but this time it was the Eagles who emerged victorious to claim their first NFL title since the 2017 season. Their last championship came in thrilling fashion in a nailbiter against the New England Patriots, but the result on Sunday was never in doubt as the Eagles’ superb defense harried Patrick Mahomes time and again, intercepting him twice in the first half, including a pick-six from cornerback Cooper DeJean on his 22nd birthday. At the break, the Eagles led 24-0. In the fourth quarter his team was 40-6 down – the largest deficit Mahomes had faced in his career. There would be no comeback.

“We had a special group this year, we were able to learn from the past,” said Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts, who was named the game’s MVP. “Defense wins championships. We saw how [our defense] played today. We saw the difference they made in the game. They gave us opportunities, gave us short fields. And we’re able to do what we do.”

The game in New Orleans was billed as the best player in the world – Mahomes – against the best overall roster. It was strength in depth that ended up being decisive as the Eagles ran out easy winners and it was their quarterback, Hurts, who looked like the best offensive player on the field. He finished with 221 passing yards, two touchdowns and an interception. He also added 72 yards rushing yards, the best of anyone on the field.

Chiefs head coach Andy Reid admitted his team were second best for the entire game. “Today was a rough day all around. Nothing went right. I didn’t coach well. Proud of our guys for fighting. We will learn from this,” Reid said. “Too many turnovers, too many penalties. Against a good football team, can’t do that.”

Full story to follow …

Tom Robbins, whose novels read like a hit of literary LSD, filled with fantastical characters, manic metaphors and counterculture whimsy, has died aged 92.

The author of works including Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Another Roadside Attraction and Still Life With Woodpecker, died on Sunday, his wife, Alexa Robbins, wrote on Facebook. The post did not cite a cause.

“He was surrounded by his family and loyal pets. Throughout these difficult last chapters, he was brave, funny and sweet,” Alexa Robbins wrote. “He asked that people remember him by reading his books.”

Robbins indulged the hippy sensibilities of young people starting in the early 1970s with books that had an overarching philosophy of what he called “serious playfulness” and a mandate that it should be pursued in the most outlandish ways possible. As he wrote in Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas: “Minds were made for blowing.”

Robbins’ characters were over the top, off the wall and around the bend. Among them were Sissy Hankshaw, the hitchhiker with the nine-inch thumbs in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and Switters, the pacifist CIA operative in love with a nun in Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates. Skinny Legs and All featured a talking can of pork and beans, a dirty sock and Turn Around Norman, a performance artist whose act consisted of moving imperceptibly.

“What I try to do, among other things, is to mix fantasy and spirituality, sexuality, humor and poetry in combinations that have never quite been seen before in literature,” Robbins said in a 2000 interview. “And I guess when a reader finishes one of my books … I would like for him or her to be in the state that they would be in after a Fellini film or a Grateful Dead concert.”

Born in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, Robbins grew up there and in Richmond, Virginia, in a family that he once described as “kind of a Southern Baptist version of The Simpsons”. He said he was dictating stories to his mother at age five and developed his writing skills further at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, working on the school newspaper with Tom Wolfe, who would go on to write The Right Stuff and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

Robbins worked as an editor, reporter and critic for newspapers in Richmond and Seattle, where he moved in the 1960s in search of a more progressive atmosphere than the South offered. He had a writing epiphany while reviewing a 1967 concert by the Doors.

“It had jimmied the lock on my language box and smashed the last of my literary inhibitions,” he wrote in the 2014 memoir titled Tibetan Peach Pie. “When I read over the paragraphs I’d written that midnight, I detected an ease, a freedom of expression, a syntax simultaneously wild and precise.”

What came next was 1971’s Another Roadside Attraction, the roundabout tale of how the mummified, unresurrected body of Jesus was stolen from the Vatican and ended up at a hotdog stand in the US north-west. Five years later, his second book, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, in which Sissy hitchhiked her way through a world of sex, drugs and mysticism, made him a cult favorite.

His novels often had strong female protagonists, which made him especially popular with female readers. And while he appealed to the youth culture, the literary establishment never warmed to Robbins. Critics said his plots were formulaic and his style overwrought.

Robbins wrote his books in longhand on legal pads, producing only a couple of pages a day and with nothing plotted in advance. An attempt at using an electric typewriter ended with the author bashing it with a piece of lumber.

He laboured over word selection and said he liked to “remind reader and writer alike that language is not the frosting, it’s the cake”. As a result, his works were overflowing with wild-eyed metaphors.

“Word spread like a skin disease in a nudist colony,” he wrote in Skinny Legs and All. In Jitterbug Perfume he described a falling man as going down “like a sack of meteorites addressed special delivery to gravity.”

Robbins had three children with his wife, Alexa.

Tom Robbins, whose novels read like a hit of literary LSD, filled with fantastical characters, manic metaphors and counterculture whimsy, has died aged 92.

The author of works including Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Another Roadside Attraction and Still Life With Woodpecker, died on Sunday, his wife, Alexa Robbins, wrote on Facebook. The post did not cite a cause.

“He was surrounded by his family and loyal pets. Throughout these difficult last chapters, he was brave, funny and sweet,” Alexa Robbins wrote. “He asked that people remember him by reading his books.”

Robbins indulged the hippy sensibilities of young people starting in the early 1970s with books that had an overarching philosophy of what he called “serious playfulness” and a mandate that it should be pursued in the most outlandish ways possible. As he wrote in Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas: “Minds were made for blowing.”

Robbins’ characters were over the top, off the wall and around the bend. Among them were Sissy Hankshaw, the hitchhiker with the nine-inch thumbs in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and Switters, the pacifist CIA operative in love with a nun in Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates. Skinny Legs and All featured a talking can of pork and beans, a dirty sock and Turn Around Norman, a performance artist whose act consisted of moving imperceptibly.

“What I try to do, among other things, is to mix fantasy and spirituality, sexuality, humor and poetry in combinations that have never quite been seen before in literature,” Robbins said in a 2000 interview. “And I guess when a reader finishes one of my books … I would like for him or her to be in the state that they would be in after a Fellini film or a Grateful Dead concert.”

Born in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, Robbins grew up there and in Richmond, Virginia, in a family that he once described as “kind of a Southern Baptist version of The Simpsons”. He said he was dictating stories to his mother at age five and developed his writing skills further at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, working on the school newspaper with Tom Wolfe, who would go on to write The Right Stuff and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

Robbins worked as an editor, reporter and critic for newspapers in Richmond and Seattle, where he moved in the 1960s in search of a more progressive atmosphere than the South offered. He had a writing epiphany while reviewing a 1967 concert by the Doors.

“It had jimmied the lock on my language box and smashed the last of my literary inhibitions,” he wrote in the 2014 memoir titled Tibetan Peach Pie. “When I read over the paragraphs I’d written that midnight, I detected an ease, a freedom of expression, a syntax simultaneously wild and precise.”

What came next was 1971’s Another Roadside Attraction, the roundabout tale of how the mummified, unresurrected body of Jesus was stolen from the Vatican and ended up at a hotdog stand in the US north-west. Five years later, his second book, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, in which Sissy hitchhiked her way through a world of sex, drugs and mysticism, made him a cult favorite.

His novels often had strong female protagonists, which made him especially popular with female readers. And while he appealed to the youth culture, the literary establishment never warmed to Robbins. Critics said his plots were formulaic and his style overwrought.

Robbins wrote his books in longhand on legal pads, producing only a couple of pages a day and with nothing plotted in advance. An attempt at using an electric typewriter ended with the author bashing it with a piece of lumber.

He laboured over word selection and said he liked to “remind reader and writer alike that language is not the frosting, it’s the cake”. As a result, his works were overflowing with wild-eyed metaphors.

“Word spread like a skin disease in a nudist colony,” he wrote in Skinny Legs and All. In Jitterbug Perfume he described a falling man as going down “like a sack of meteorites addressed special delivery to gravity.”

Robbins had three children with his wife, Alexa.

Kosovo’s ruling Vetevendosje party was on track to win the country’s parliamentary election, but will need to negotiate a coalition with other parties to form a government, exit polls and preliminary results showed.

With 73% of the votes counted, prime minister Albin Kurti’s leftist Self-Determination Movement Party, or Vetevendosje, had won 41.99%.

The election result would be a drop from the more than 50% that it won in 2021. But it puts Kurti in position to lead the next government in a country whose politics are dominated by the relationship with neighbouring Serbia and Serbs within its borders.

During the election campaign Kurti apparently ruled out forming a coalition, saying he would not participate in government unless he won an outright majority.

But, late on Sunday after proclaiming victory, Kurti said he would form the new government without hinting who could be a potential coalition partner.

“We are the first party, the winning party that will create the next government,” Kurti told reporters. “We will continue to finish the work that we have started.”

Kurti’s party called supporters to go out in the streets to celebrate.

Kosovo’s election commission said it was not able to publish the full results on Sunday because its software was down and they will collect data manually and publish early hours on Monday.

“We apologise to all Kosovo citizens,” head of election commission Kreshnik Radoniqi said.

The opposition Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) conceded Vetevendosje victory. Its leader Lumir Abdixhiku said that according to LDK’s own vote count Vetevendosje had come first with 39.08% of the votes, the opposition Democratic party of Kosovo came second with 21.84% of the votes while his party came third with 18.14% of the votes.

Three exit polls gave Kurti between 37% and 40.04% of the votes.

Kurti, an Albanian nationalist, came to power in 2021 when a coalition run by the Vetevendosje party received more than 50% of votes and secured a seven-seat majority in the 120-seat parliament.

Kosovo, Europe’s newest country, gained independence from Serbia in 2008 with backing from the United States after a 78-day Nato bombing campaign against Serbian forces in 1999.

Political analysts say Kurti’s popularity has been bolstered by moves to extend government control in Kosovo’s ethnic Serb-majority north. But critics say he has failed to deliver on education and health services, and that his policies have distanced Kosovo from its traditional allies, the European Union and the United States.

The EU placed economic curbs on the country in 2023 for its role in stoking tensions with ethnic Serbs, cutting at least 150m euros ($155m) in funding, Reuters has found.

The centre-right LDK campaigned on restoring relations with the United States and the EU, and joining Nato.

Kurti’s government has had some wins. Unemployment has shrunk from 30% to about 10%, the minimum wage is up and last year the economy grew faster than the western Balkans average.

The election campaign has been acrimonious. The Elections Complaints and Appeals Panel, which monitors party and candidates’ complaints, has issued more than 650,000 euros in fines to parties this election season, three times the 2021 tally, data from NGO Democracy in Action shows.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report

Ecuadorians are voting in a presidential election that has shaped up to be a repeat of the 2023 race, when they chose a young, conservative millionaire over the former leftist president’s protege.

Luisa González and the incumbent, Daniel Noboa, are the clear frontrunners in the pool of 16 candidates. All have promised to reduce the widespread crime that pushed the country into an unnerving new normal four years ago.

The rise in violence across the South American country is linked to the trafficking of cocaine produced in neighbouring Colombia and Peru. Many voters have become victims of crime, so their personal and collective losses will be a determining factor in the outcome of the election.

Voting is mandatory in Ecuador. In the port city of Guayaquil, people lined up under a light rain outside a public university where tens of thousands were expected to cast ballots.

“For me, this president is disastrous,” said Marta Barres, 35, who went to the voting centre with her three teenage children. “Can he change things in four more years? No. He hasn’t done anything.”

Barres, who must pay $25 (£20) a month to a local gang to avoid harassment or worse, said she would vote for González because she believed she could reduce crime and improve the economy.

More than 13.7 million people are eligible to vote. To win outright, a candidate needs 50% of the vote or at least 40% with a 10-point lead over the closest challenger. If needed, a runoff election would take place on 13 April.

Noboa defeated González in the October 2023 runoff of a snap election that was triggered by the decision of the then president, Guillermo Lasso, to dissolve the national assembly and shorten his own mandate as a result. Noboa and González, a mentee of the former president Rafael Correa, had served only short stints as lawmakers before launching their 2023 presidential campaigns.

Noboa, 37, is an heir to a fortune built on the banana trade. He founded an event-organising company when he was 18 and then joined his father’s Noboa Corp, where he held management positions in the shipping, logistics and commercial areas. His political career began in 2021, when he won a seat in the national assembly and chaired its economic development commission.

Under his presidency, the homicide rate dropped from 46.18 per 100,000 people in 2023 to 38.76 per 100,000 people last year. It nevertheless remains far higher than the 6.85 per 100,000 people in 2019.

Keila Torres, an architecture student waiting for her turn to vote, said she had not yet decided who to vote for. None of the candidates, she said, would be able to lower crime across Ecuador because of deep-rooted government corruption.

“If I could, I wouldn’t be here,” said Torres, who has witnessed three robberies in public buses over the past four years and barely escaped a carjacking in December. “Things are not going to change.”

Torres added that criminal activity had affected her studies as her neighbourhood’s gang targeted anyone walking the streets after 10pm., which forced her to skip night classes to not miss curfew. She said her family was not forced to pay monthly extortion fees to the gang, but the group had urged neighbours to vote for a specific candidate.

“In my area, they left flyers in every house door saying that if they didn’t vote for Luisa, they would have to face the consequences,” Torres said.

González, 47, held various government jobs during the presidency of Correa, who led Ecuador from 2007 to 2017 with free-spending socially conservative policies and grew increasingly authoritarian in his last years as president. He was sentenced to prison in absentia in 2020 in a corruption scandal.

González was a lawmaker from 2021 until May 2023, when Lasso dissolved the national assembly. She was unknown to most voters until Correa’s party picked her as its presidential candidate for the snap election.

Israeli forces have withdrawn from the strategic corridor that divides northern and southern Gaza, as part of a ceasefire plan that has brought a fragile pause to the 16-month war.

On Sunday, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hamas officials confirmed that the Israeli military had withdrawn from the Netzarim corridor, the 4-mile (6km) strip of land that Israel set up within weeks of the war and used as a military zone during the fighting.

When the ceasefire came into effect last month, Israel began allowing Palestinians to cross Netzarim to return to their homes in the devastated north, with hundreds of thousands of people streaming across Gaza on foot and by car.

Hamas spokesperson Abdel Latif al-Qanoua said the withdrawal showed it had “forced the enemy to submit to our demands” and that it had thwarted the Israeli government’s “illusion of achieving total victory”.

Israeli officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss troop movement with the media, did not disclose how many soldiers withdrew or to where.

Israel has said it will not agree to a complete withdrawal from Gaza until Hamas’s military and political capabilities have been eliminated. Hamas, meanwhile, says it will not hand over the last hostages it seized during its attacks on 7 October 2023 until Israel removes all troops from the territory.

Despite the withdrawal – and the release of some of the hostages and prisoners held by both sides – little progress has been made on negotiating the second phase of the deal, which is designed to extend the truce and to secure the release of more Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

Further doubts over what comes next arose on Saturday after it emerged that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had dispatched a delegation including low-level officials to Qatar – which helped negotiate the truce – prompting speculation that the mission might not lead to a breakthrough in extending the ceasefire.

A day later, the Palestinian health ministry said two women in their 20s, one of whom was eight months pregnant, were fatally shot by Israeli gunfire in the northern occupied West Bank.

Under the first 42-day phase of the ceasefire, Hamas is gradually releasing 33 of the Israeli hostages it seized, in exchange for a pause in fighting, the freeing of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and access to more humanitarian aid into war-battered Gaza.

The second phase anticipates the release of all remaining living hostages in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a “sustainable calm”.

But more substantial details remain unclear and the ongoing efforts to secure an extension to the ceasefire have been hindered by deep mutual distrust – and, more recently, by Donald Trump’s wildly inflammatory suggestion that the US could take control of the Gaza Strip and clear out its inhabitants.

On Tuesday, the US president said America would “take over” and “own” Gaza, claiming that it could become the “riviera of the Middle East”. He also called for Jordan, Egypt and other Arab states to take in Palestinians.

The suggestion produced shock waves across the Middle East and prompted a warning from the UN secretary general, António Guterres, against “any form of ethnic cleansing”.

Egypt’s foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, headed to Washington for talks on Sunday, while Trump’s plans have prompted Cairo to host an emergency summit of Arab nations on 27 February.

A statement from the Egyptian foreign ministr​y said the gathering had been called “after extensive consultations by Egypt at the highest levels with Arab countries in recent days, including Palestine, which requested the summit, to address the latest serious developments regarding the Palestinian cause”.

Netanyahu, however, has welcomed Trump’s proposal, saying Israel was willing to “do the job” after Trump ruled out sending American troops to the territory.

The Israeli prime minister told Fox News on Saturday: “I think that President Trump’s proposal is the first fresh idea in years, and it has the potential to change everything in Gaza.”

Netanyahu sparked further fury when he suggested that a Palestinian state – which he has long opposed – could be “in Saudi Arabia”.

The Saudi foreign ministry stressed its “categorical rejection [of] such statements”, while the Arab League chief, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said such ideas “are nothing more than mere fantasies or illusions”.

Netanyahu’s far-right political allies want to resume the war after the first phase so that Hamas, which carried out the deadliest attack on Israelis in their history, can be defeated. But the prime minister is also facing pressure from Israelis who are eager to see more hostages return home and want the deal to continue, especially after the gaunt appearances of the three male captives freed on Saturday ​​shocked the nation.

Netanyahu’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who opposed the ceasefire, has threatened to quit the coalition if the war does not resume – a move that could topple the administration.

The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

Israeli forces have withdrawn from the strategic corridor that divides northern and southern Gaza, as part of a ceasefire plan that has brought a fragile pause to the 16-month war.

On Sunday, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hamas officials confirmed that the Israeli military had withdrawn from the Netzarim corridor, the 4-mile (6km) strip of land that Israel set up within weeks of the war and used as a military zone during the fighting.

When the ceasefire came into effect last month, Israel began allowing Palestinians to cross Netzarim to return to their homes in the devastated north, with hundreds of thousands of people streaming across Gaza on foot and by car.

Hamas spokesperson Abdel Latif al-Qanoua said the withdrawal showed it had “forced the enemy to submit to our demands” and that it had thwarted the Israeli government’s “illusion of achieving total victory”.

Israeli officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss troop movement with the media, did not disclose how many soldiers withdrew or to where.

Israel has said it will not agree to a complete withdrawal from Gaza until Hamas’s military and political capabilities have been eliminated. Hamas, meanwhile, says it will not hand over the last hostages it seized during its attacks on 7 October 2023 until Israel removes all troops from the territory.

Despite the withdrawal – and the release of some of the hostages and prisoners held by both sides – little progress has been made on negotiating the second phase of the deal, which is designed to extend the truce and to secure the release of more Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

Further doubts over what comes next arose on Saturday after it emerged that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had dispatched a delegation including low-level officials to Qatar – which helped negotiate the truce – prompting speculation that the mission might not lead to a breakthrough in extending the ceasefire.

A day later, the Palestinian health ministry said two women in their 20s, one of whom was eight months pregnant, were fatally shot by Israeli gunfire in the northern occupied West Bank.

Under the first 42-day phase of the ceasefire, Hamas is gradually releasing 33 of the Israeli hostages it seized, in exchange for a pause in fighting, the freeing of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and access to more humanitarian aid into war-battered Gaza.

The second phase anticipates the release of all remaining living hostages in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a “sustainable calm”.

But more substantial details remain unclear and the ongoing efforts to secure an extension to the ceasefire have been hindered by deep mutual distrust – and, more recently, by Donald Trump’s wildly inflammatory suggestion that the US could take control of the Gaza Strip and clear out its inhabitants.

On Tuesday, the US president said America would “take over” and “own” Gaza, claiming that it could become the “riviera of the Middle East”. He also called for Jordan, Egypt and other Arab states to take in Palestinians.

The suggestion produced shock waves across the Middle East and prompted a warning from the UN secretary general, António Guterres, against “any form of ethnic cleansing”.

Egypt’s foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, headed to Washington for talks on Sunday, while Trump’s plans have prompted Cairo to host an emergency summit of Arab nations on 27 February.

A statement from the Egyptian foreign ministr​y said the gathering had been called “after extensive consultations by Egypt at the highest levels with Arab countries in recent days, including Palestine, which requested the summit, to address the latest serious developments regarding the Palestinian cause”.

Netanyahu, however, has welcomed Trump’s proposal, saying Israel was willing to “do the job” after Trump ruled out sending American troops to the territory.

The Israeli prime minister told Fox News on Saturday: “I think that President Trump’s proposal is the first fresh idea in years, and it has the potential to change everything in Gaza.”

Netanyahu sparked further fury when he suggested that a Palestinian state – which he has long opposed – could be “in Saudi Arabia”.

The Saudi foreign ministry stressed its “categorical rejection [of] such statements”, while the Arab League chief, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said such ideas “are nothing more than mere fantasies or illusions”.

Netanyahu’s far-right political allies want to resume the war after the first phase so that Hamas, which carried out the deadliest attack on Israelis in their history, can be defeated. But the prime minister is also facing pressure from Israelis who are eager to see more hostages return home and want the deal to continue, especially after the gaunt appearances of the three male captives freed on Saturday ​​shocked the nation.

Netanyahu’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who opposed the ceasefire, has threatened to quit the coalition if the war does not resume – a move that could topple the administration.

The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

Police want changes to the law giving them “a licence to kill”, leading rights groups have warned as the government prepares to give officers new protections from prosecution.

A government-ordered review into police accountability is expected to report within weeks. It followed fears of a walkout by angry armed officers in London after a police marksman, Martyn Blake, was tried for murder over the shooting of Chris Kaba. Blake was acquitted in October by a jury in three hours.

Police say they want the system to be fairer and protect officers who use force as part of their duties. Rights groups believe the system holding police to account is already too weak, and diluting it would “undermine public trust”.

In a letter seen by the Guardian, groups including Inquest, the Centre for Women’s Justice, Liberty and Black Lives Matter warn the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, against weakening police accountability.

“This review is less a kneejerk reaction but rather a dangerous and calculated attempt to use a high-profile case to push for less scrutiny and accountability of police actions,” they said.

“The number of cases where police officers are prosecuted for a death is vanishingly small (since 1990 there has only been one successful prosecution of an officer for manslaughter and none for murder).

“2023-24 saw a 10% increase in police use of force and the highest figure of police-related deaths for nearly a decade.

“Our work has exposed disturbing levels of neglect, violence and excessive use of force by police officers, particularly in cases involving black and racialised people. The institutional impunity afforded the police at an individual and corporate level indicates in most cases that police officers remain above the law.”

Inquest says since 1990 there have been 1,915 deaths after police custody or contact.

Later this year new laws will be introduced giving anonymity to firearms officers who shoot someone, unless they are convicted.

Within weeks, a review conducted by a former judge and former senior Scotland Yard chief will report.

It is looking at whether it should be made harder for inquests to find police unlawfully killed someone. It is also examining whether to make it harder to disprove an officer’s claim of self-defence in misconduct inquiries, by changing the standard of proof to the higher criminal test of beyond reasonable doubt, rather than the current civil test which is on the balance of probabilities.

Susan Alexander, whose son Azelle Rodney was shot dead by police in 2005 while on the way to rob a rival drug gang, said: “Seeing the police and their representatives now once again invest their energy to try to weaken the ways in which we can hold them accountable is an insult.

“Instead, imagine how many lives could be saved and families spared if they focused on implementing change and listening to us families rather than continuing to shut us out.”

Deborah Coles, the director of Inquest, said: “This review is a cynical attempt to shield the police from accountability and protect them from the rule of law. Police should not have a licence to kill. The changes they want would, in effect, give them one.”

The government believes it faces a balancing act of ensuring officers have the confidence to use their powers, while also reassuring the public that police are not above the law.

The Home Office was asked to comment.

Britain’s system for controlling arms exports is broken, subject to political manipulation and has seen conduct that crossed the threshold into complicity with war crimes, a former UK diplomat has claimed.

Writing for the Guardian, Mark Smith, who resigned from the Foreign Office in August, said officials were instructed to manipulate findings on the misuse of UK arms by allies, and if they did not do so, their reports were edited by senior colleagues to give the impression that the UK was in compliance with the law.

Appealing to serving Foreign Office officials to end their cooperation with a broken process, he wrote: “What I witnessed was not just moral failure but conduct that I believe crossed the threshold into complicity with war crimes.

“The British public deserves to know how these decisions are made behind closed doors – and how systemic dysfunction enables the government to perpetuate harm while shielding itself from scrutiny.”

He also said his efforts to raise his concerns were blocked, and he was ordered not to put his concerns in writing in case they became subject to freedom of information requests.

Smith served as a Middle East desk specialist adviser on arms sales, and subsequently moved to serve as a second secretary at the UK embassy in Dublin.

He wrote: “The Foreign Office’s handling of these issues is nothing short of a scandal. Officials are bullied into silence. Processes are manipulated to produce politically convenient outcomes. Whistleblowers are stonewalled, isolated, and ignored.”

Although much of his criticism is directed at the last Conservative government concerning arms sales to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen, and arms sales to Israel, Smith did not absolve Labour. He welcomed the UK ban on arms exports to Israel in September, but since then, he said the government had stood by as Israel continued to commit war crimes.

The UK last September banned sales of arms for use in Gaza, but exempted all parts for the F-35 jet programme, a carve-out that is now subject to full judicial review. UK laws state that the government will not issue export licences “if there is a clear risk that the items might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law”. The Foreign Office still insists it has not been able to conclude that Israel’s bombing of Gaza breached international law.

Possibly the most significant of Smith’s allegations is the claim that officials had demanded the toning down of evidence that UK arms had been used to commit war crimes, which would be a clear manipulation of what is intended to be an objective evidence-gathering process.

Smith wrote: “The most egregious example of this manipulation occurred during my work on arms sales to Saudi Arabia amidst its military campaign in Yemen. The UK government was fully aware that Saudi airstrikes were causing massive civilian casualties.

“In a high-level meeting with senior officials, including legal advisers and the Queen’s Counsel, it was acknowledged that the UK had exceeded the legal threshold for halting arms sales. Yet instead of advising ministers to suspend exports, the focus shifted to finding ways to ‘get back on the right side’ of the law.

“Rather than confronting the illegality, officials resorted to delaying tactics – extending reporting deadlines and demanding additional information that was unnecessary. This ‘wait for more evidence’ approach created a loophole, allowing arms sales to continue while the government feigned compliance.

“I raised my concerns repeatedly, only to be overruled. One of my colleagues, equally troubled by what we were witnessing, resigned over the issue. I soon followed.”

Smith wrote that the endorsement of UK arms sales to Israel between October 2023 and September 2024 was even more shocking: “Israel’s repeated bombardments of Gaza have killed thousands of civilians and destroyed vital infrastructure, actions that are blatantly incompatible with international law. Yet the UK government continued to justify arms sales to Israel, relying on the same flawed processes and evasive tactics.”

He said from the UK embassy in Ireland – a country that strongly backs a Palestinian state – he sought answers from the Foreign Office headquarters about the legal basis for arms sales to Israel, and was “met with hostility and stonewalling”.

“Emails went unanswered. I was warned not to put my concerns in writing. Lawyers and senior officials bombarded me with defensive instructions to ‘stick to the lines’ and delete correspondence. It became clear that no one was willing to address the fundamental question: How could continued arms sales to Israel possibly be legal?

“I followed every internal procedure available to me to raise my concerns. I engaged the whistleblowing team, wrote to senior officials, and even attempted to contact the foreign secretary directly. At every turn, I was met with delays, obfuscation, and outright refusal to engage. It became clear that the system is not designed to hold itself accountable – it is designed to protect itself at all costs.”

Smith’s evidence may prove material in the case being mounted by human rights groups over the continued sale of parts for the F35s that are sold to Israel and can be used in Gaza.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “These allegations are a misrepresentation of this government. Our export licence controls are some of the most robust in the world and are strictly guided by legal advice. As soon as the foreign secretary took office, he ordered a review into Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law and on 2 September, we suspended export licences to Israel for use in military operations in the Gaza conflict.”

The Foreign Office said it could not comment on individual cases, but had an established process for handling internal concerns.

Yrjö Kukkapuro, a renowned Finnish designer whose postmodern style of chairs graced waiting rooms, offices and living rooms across Finland as well as collections in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, has died aged 91.

Kukkapuro died on Saturday at his home outside Helsinki, his daughter, Isa Kukkapuro-Enbom, confirmed in an email on Sunday, as well as in a statement from Studio Kukkapuro, where she is the curator. The cause of death was not disclosed.

“Almost every Finn has sat on a chair he designed – at a metro station, in a bank, at school, or in a library,” the studio said in a news release. “Yrjö Kukkapuro never stopped designing and coming up with new ideas. Until the very end, he pondered a concept of ​​his new chair, the plan of which was clear in his mind. His assistant didn’t have time to make drawings of the chair.”

In a career spanning more than 70 years, Kukkapuro’s chairs were lauded for their comfort, functionalism and ergonomics as well as their design, and featured names like Ateljee, Karuselli-chair, Long Chair and, his most famous, the Experiment.

Designed in 1982, the Experiment chair was considered avant-garde but ultimately became commercially successful and was seen as a key turning point for the postmodern style of furniture. The Experiment includes decorative, wavy armrests in bright colors, an upholstered back and bottom, and a signature angled seat – despite the frame being flat on the ground.

Although initial production ceased in the 1990s, the European furniture design brand Hem sought permission from Kukkapuro in 2021 to reproduce it with minor adjustments to the scale and construction.

“We are saddened by the news of Yrjö’s passing, and our thoughts are with his family,” said Hem’s founder and chief executive, Petrus Palmér. “He was a furniture design trailblazer, and showed us that a non-conformist approach is the only way to achieve a lasting legacy.”

The Experiment chair retailed for up to €2,399 ($2,479) on Hem’s website Sunday, where a description called it “timeless, bold, and as compelling today as the day it was created”.

“In the Experiment Chair, Kukkapuro sought to add art to Functionalism, to satisfy romantic tastes alongside meeting essential needs,” the description reads. “The result is startling, authentic, a hero of 20th-century design.”

Kukkapuro designed his family’s studio and home to feature a wave-shaped roof and floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Built in the late 1960s for him and his wife, the artist Irmeli Kukkapuro, who died in 2022, it’s scheduled to become a museum next year.

An enormous fatberg in central Perth has forced a Bryan Adams concert to be cancelled after authorities raised concerns that sewage may back up at the venue’s toilets.

Adams was due to perform at the Western Australian capital’s RAC Arena on Sunday night, but the city’s water corporation said a “large blockage of fat, grease and rags” was causing wastewater overflows at nearby properties, prompting authorities to intervene.

Frontier Touring posted a statement on Monday announcing the cancellation, and that attendees will receive an automatic refund in full.

“Last night’s concert could not proceed due to an external Perth Water Corporation issue, which was unable to be fixed in time. The issue, which impacted all of Wellington Street, meant that it was deemed unsafe for patrons to enter RAC Arena.”

“The cancellation of (the) show is bitterly disappointing, and we thank fans for their understanding that while every effort was made for the show to proceed, this matter was outside of the control of Bryan Adams, Frontier Touring and RAC Arena.”

Crowds had waited for hours for the concert, with pictures on social media showing masses of people outside the venue and complaints online that they had been left without an update.

The support act, James Arthur, was scheduled to take the stage about 7.45pm, before Adams at 9pm.

A text message sent at about 7:15pm said the concert had been delayed, and then a second message at about 7:35pm said doors had to remain closed.

“Due to an external Water Corporation issue, doors continue to remain closed for the time being. All efforts are being made to resolve this issue. We will continue to keep you informed,” it said.

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At around 9pm, a final message confirmed that the concert was delayed “due to an external Water Corporation water supply issue which could not be resolved.”

“All existing ticketholders will be notified of an update as soon as possible and need not take any action at this time.”

A late-night update from the Water Corporation posted on Facebook explained the cancellation and advised people to avoid contact with “pooled water” in Wellington Street, which runs alongside the venue, as it may be sewage.

“As a priority, Water Corporation crews are working to clear the large blockage of fat, grease and rags, which has caused several wastewater overflows at properties along Wellington Street,” the alert said.

“Acting on public health advice from Department of Health, the Bryan Adams concert at RAC Arena this evening was cancelled due to the risk of sewage backing up within the venue toilets.”

Frustrated concertgoers took to comments on the Facebook post, with many complaining about the lack of earlier updates.

“Yeah thanks for telling us 3 HOURS after the event and 3 hrs after we stood in a queue ! Pathetic,” one commenter said.

“Terrible service!! An international popstar like Bryan Adams comes to Perth and this is what happens,” another said.

“Bryan Adams: Please forgive me, it’s the summer of sh*ts & urine.”